Reincarnated Hero System

The Star descended into Aidos and had a little bit of an abrupt meeting with the Consciousness of the Planet who initially thought it had stolen that body.

After the misunderstanding was resolved, the Star decided to stay in that world for a while.

It had nothing much to do since its power wasn’t increasing anymore, and it didn’t have any planets in mind to conquer.

So, spending a few years in the Home World of the person who helped grant its wish to gain a body didn’t seem like a bad idea.

The Star spent a leisurely time in that world for a while, but there were those who were dissatisfied with the Star’s presence.

It was currently a ‘Race Queen’, and in entering Aidos, it had disrupted the power balance between the Race Ruler Factions on the planet.

Some tried to bring the Star to their side, others tried to chase it away, and some tried to kill it.

The Spirit Kings of Aidos were the ones who majorly constituted this third group.

Faced with people who wanted to end its life, the Star did not hesitate to retaliate and wipe them all out, leaving the Prime World with only one Spirit King left.

That last Spirit King said something to it, that struck a chord within it.

The Spirit King had told the Star, that although the Star possessed the body of a ‘Spirit of Aidos’, the ‘Content’ was NOT one.

This made the Star come to a realisation.

In the thousands of years that had passed since gaining its Spirit body, the Star had not truly accepted its new identity.

Deep down, there was still a part of it that despite having assimilated the woman’s soul, was still considering the woman’s Existential Records within it to belong to ‘someone else’.

It wasn’t exactly wrong to do this, but since it had assimilated the woman, those Existential Records now belonged to the Star.

Rejecting them was rejecting a vital part of its Existence.

It was because of this realisation that the Star spared the life of that young Spirit King who bore the name ‘Sinclair’.

The Star self-reflected, and in the process, it unearthed the buried vestige the woman had left.

The name the woman had chosen for her.

Kaylatheurge.

Despite having many titles, the Star still didn’t truly have a ‘Name’.

And so, it accepted the name the woman left for it. It embraced those Existential Records, embraced the fact that it had become someone else from who it originally was.

Like that was the final cog in the wheel, all the previously closed doors opened up to the star.

The Star, it became…No. Kaylatheurge, she became the Spirit Empress. The first Emperor Level existence from the Planet Aidos.

After ruling the Spirits of Aidos for a few more centuries, she left things to that last Spirit King, before vanishing beyond the stars.

She continued her journey of conquest, taking over planets and gaining more power. She gained many enemies in the process, but as a Race Empress, only four other beings could stand up to her so she was fearless.

Her only weakness was the fact that she had to regularly cloak herself with the auras of other stars, but that was something only she knew so she wasn’t worried about it.

People found her habit of sleeping within stars to be peculiar, but it was a consensus that one didn’t live for millions of years without having a few screws loose so no one bothered to think too much about it.

Not until the previous wielder of the Akashic Record—the nigh-omniscient Cosmic Artifact from which Evan’s ‘Akashic Page’ originated—had ended up on her bad side.

Information from the Akashic Record did not come for free. One needed to pay a price and depending on the levels of the existences involved, that price could spike tremendously.

For this Akashic Record Wielder, the price to know the ‘way to defeat Kaylatheurge’, an existence many times more powerful than he was, and had far more ‘Authority’ than he did…was his life.

A price he paid without hesitation due to his deep hatred.

He gained information about the Spirit Empress’ greatest secret, and before the Akashic Record sucked away all his life force, he released this information on the Interstellar stage.

Causality Enforcers who had been looking for leads on the Star of Lightning’s consciousness for millions of years were all dumbfounded to discover the answer had been right in their faces this whole time.

They first tried to use Causality’s power to separate her from her body and return her to being the star’s consciousness, but that failed woefully.

Next, they tried to kill her, but this was an even dumber decision. She was too strong.

They claimed that unless she died, a new consciousness could not be born in the Star of Lightning. So it was either she went back or they killed her.

But there was no way she would agree to either option.

As they could not defeat her in direct combat, they set a trap for her.

Rigging the star that she planned to use to cloak herself with, they warped her into an area of the Universe with dead galaxies everywhere.

The nearest stars were millions of light years away, and she was unable to get to them fast enough for her cloaking to wear off.

Causality came for her, and she had to sacrifice a portion of her power to stave it off temporarily.

With her powers diminished, the Causality Enforcers took the chance to try bringing her down, and they nearly succeeded as they had allied with many of the Spirit Empress’ enemies, and rebellious subordinates.

Her battles were fraught with betrayals from her subordinates, enticed by whatever reward the Causality Enforcers had promised them.

However, the Spirit Empress received the help of an unexpected figure and she prevailed.

Thanks to this person, the Spirit Empress was also able to recover her lost power and devise a means to deal with causality itself.

She limited her power below the ‘Empress’ level, shy of what would trigger causality to go after her. It was looking for a ‘Spirit Empress’, and in her limited state, she was not an ‘Empress’ but a ‘Queen’.

In the meantime, Kaylatheurge embarked on a journey with this helper of hers, to pay them back for the help they afforded her.

She followed her Benefactor for many years, taking time to learn more about them. Although she had known about them since they were a very famous person and one of the most powerful beings besides the Emperors, she knew nothing of them personally.

This effort to learn more about them allowed her to understand their situation and how they were being exploited by the people they worked for. She offered them advice and assisted them in breaking free from their employers’ influence.

But noticing that they were no more as compliant as before, their employers—the god Kings—struck first.

They betrayed the one who had worked for them for years and tried to kill them. To protect her Benefactor, Kaylatheurge helped them fight the gods.

Unable to defeat her, the god Kings enlisted the help of someone who could.

The god Emperor, Craig!

Against the god Emperor, Kaylatheurge had no choice but to release her limiter and buy time for her wounded and poisoned Benefactor to escape.

She wanted to go after them when she had fought off the god Emperor, but having spent too long without her limiter, causality had caught onto her.

With the god Emperor’s help, causality was able to capture her and imprison her back within the Star of Lightning.

She spent nearly a thousand years imprisoned until she was broken out by an unlikely group of people.

Surprisingly, of the group of three who broke her out, two were goddesses.

In the time she spent imprisoned, the god race had split into two factions decided by their ages…the Old gods and the New gods.

These two goddesses who helped free her were part of the latter faction and were pretty much its commanders.

Naturally, the third person who helped free her was the same Benefactor for whom she had released her limiter to fight.

In the thousand years she was imprisoned, her Benefactor had worked under the one who had saved them from the poison of the Old gods.

A Great War had ensued on the Interstellar stage, and her Benefactor requested her help to put an end to it.

Kaylatheurge obliged, also so she could get revenge on the god Emperor who caused her to be unable to escape causality.

At the end of the War, her Benefactor who had grown tired of all the fighting decided that they wanted to rest.

She too, was also exhausted from running from causality for years, so she returned to the place closest to what she could call home, Aidos.

Kaylatheurge made the World forget who she was, hiding her existential records just like Artemisia had done Evan’s.

It wasn’t as thorough as Artemisia’s, so if anyone who knew her was to see her with their eyes, they would remember who she was.

Nevertheless, she was not bothered.

She randomly picked one of the continents that survived the War, entered the abode of the Great Wind Spirit at that time and slumbered there for a long time.

Kaylatheurge did not know how long she slept, only being abruptly awakened one seemingly random October day in Year 1038.

She had no idea about the cause of her awakening, but since she was awake, she decided to see how much the planet had changed.

Her identity as Aidos’ Great Lightning Spirit was still there, so she went with it. As her existential records were hidden, the World created new ones for her, and this led to the Great Spirits perceiving that a new Great Spirit had ‘just been born’, when in reality, this one was older than even their Spirit King.

She spent years with the Great Wind Spirit, before venturing outside the continent. During her journey across the new Aidos, she found a certain boy Hero who gave off a warmth that made her feel comfortable around him…just like her Benefactor did in the past.

Discovering that he had an affinity for Spirits, she enlisted the help of one of the goddesses who had freed her thousands of years ago, and nearly a year after she first randomly encountered him, she placed herself in the perfect position that the young Hero ended up contracting with her.

As a Hero meant to protect Aidos from being invaded, he was bound to encounter beings from the World that posed the Number 1 threat to Aidos at the current time: Gozon.

Kaylatheurge knew Gozon. She used to be friends with many of its rulers in the past, but most of those friends of hers had perished in the Great War.

It was then that a thought sprouted in her mind.

She liked this her new contractor, and certainly wanted to stay with him for a while. But what if he was to find out about her past, where she was a Conqueror of Worlds like the Gozonians?

What if he viewed her in the same light as the Gozonians?

In some ways, she was even worse than the Gozonians, so he’d probably see her in an even worse light.

Perhaps he might even hate her? Or regret ever meeting her?

No.

That wasn’t good.

She didn’t want that.

Originally having intended to inform him about her past, the thoughts of being viewed in the same manner as the Gozonians struck fear in her and she changed her decision.

But things didn’t all go as she planned, and due to a series of circumstances, he still ended up discovering all that she didn’t want him to.

◇　◇　◇

“…”

Having heard Kayla’s tale, Evan was silent, his lips curling downwards a bit.

Kayla had her eyes facing the ground, avoiding meeting his eyes as she was scared of seeing the look they carried.

Evan, however, simply had a contemplative look in his eyes.

‘There’s still a lot lost in translation here…especially regarding her whole fear of being hated.

Nevertheless…a lot of things make sense now.

Like why Gnome ran away after seeing her in Geto, why Undine was scared shitless at the sight of her, and why Spirit King Sinclair has been avoiding her all this while. The ‘last Spirit King’ she didn’t kill is definitely Sinclair.

She didn’t explicitly state it, but one of the New gods who freed her was Artemisia. Who’s the other? Aphine?’

He pondered this for a few seconds before deciding that it didn’t really matter at this time. Coming out of his sea of thoughts, he looked at the girl standing in front of him and spoke.

“Well…that’s a lot to take in. Kinda makes it hard to believe those are only the ‘basics’. But considering the scale of things, it adds up, I guess.”

Evan shrugged nonchalantly, before stepping forward and pulling the silent girl into a hug.

[?!]

“You’ve been through a lot, huh?”

The boy patted her back as he spoke, and feeling the warmth of his hug, Kayla didn’t even know when tears slipped out of her eyes.

Hearing her sniffling, Evan couldn’t help but smile wryly as he spoke.

“About that regret stuff…I don’t regret meeting you, okay? Let that stick and don’t think otherwise.

I don’t hate you; I don’t regret meeting you, and no, I don’t see you as the same as the Gozonians, okay?

If anything, I’m happy you wanted to contract with me. Lucky me.”

Kayla sniffled again, her voice trembling as she whispered a response.

[I’m…the lucky one…”]

Tightly grasping Evan’s body with her slender arms, Kalya completed her response in her mind.

‘I’m happy that you chose me…I’m the one who’s lucky you chose to save me…Benefactor…’